What birds might breed in Britain for the first time in 2015? One distinct candidate is an extraordinary little bird, the penduline tit. This is a tiny bird of the reed beds, with a grey head, a black mask and a reddish-brown back. With this plumage, it has been aptly compared to a miniature

A bird that people easily pass by without noticing in the winter is the golden plover. These stocky birds congregate in ploughed fields, standing very still for much of the time, and their dark yellowish-brown backs camouflage them well against the earth. If they are far out in a large field, they

Already on the first day of the new year, there are activities going on in the countryside that anticipate the spring. Herons return to their bulky nests in the treetops, and poke about in them. They are early breeders, and some birds will lay their eggs before the end of February. Their nests need

A tree that defies the winter weather is the rosebud cherry, which came from Japan. Along the streets in towns, there are now many of these trees with pink blossom, while most of the other trees are bare. The flowers come out on the twigs in little rosy groups of three to five. The early-flowering

More long-tailed tits come into gardens to feed when the weather is frosty, and it is worth looking out to see if any of them has a pure white head, rather than a head with the normal thick, black eyebrow. Any bird with this snowy version of its head is probably a northern long-tailed tit from

Among the million or so wild geese that come down from the Arctic to winter in Britain, there are almost 100,000 barnacle geese. Some of them winter on the Hebridean islands, especially on Islay. Others crowd the shores of the Solway Firth. They are neat little black-and-white geese, and when the

A Boxing Day walk might consist of an inspection of the buds on the trees, all now so easy to see. The leaf and flower buds for 2015 began to form even before this year’s leaves fell in the autumn, and now they are fully exposed on the bare twigs. This means that the prospects for the beauty of

Christmas party givers are not the only creatures that go in search of mistletoe. Birds like to eat the berries, especially mistle thrushes, which chase other birds off them, and get their name from the plant. “Mistletoe” itself is an Old Norse word, that probably came into English through the

Most of the Christmas trees that are adorned with coloured lights across the country are norway spruces. These trees come originally from the forests of continental Europe, but are now grown widely in this country for timber, and also as Christmas trees. They are favoured for these because of their

On mild days with a little sunshine, skylarks can sometimes be heard singing over the fields. The singer often stays in the same place in the air for a long time, hovering with its face to the wind. In summer, skylarks can go so high that they are practically lost to sight, but in winter they